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Topic: Green and Free Market solutions (Read 1511 times)
Power User
Posts: 29669
Green and Free Market solutions
September 22, 2011, 08:37:26 AM »
Green Tea Party
By TERRY L. ANDERSON
As the presidential campaign heats up, it would be nice to see some environmental leadership. Unfortunately, neither political party is providing it. Democrats keep throwing money and regulations at environmental problems, and Republicans keep arguing that a focus on jobs and the economy must trump environmental protection.
It is time for a movement that brings environmental quality through economic prosperity. It's time for a Green Tea Party.
The GTP would not be for you if you think increasing Washington bureaucracy budgets will produce a cleaner environment. Since 1980, the Environmental Protection Agency's inflation-adjusted budget has been relatively flat, but air and water quality have improved. Most improvements came through cost-saving technologies in the private sector, not regulations.
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.The GTP's platform would be that only prosperity and incentives can drive environmental improvements. The first plank: Wealthier is healthier. From the U.S. to the former Soviet Union, data show that economic growth is necessary for environmental improvement, not its enemy. Such growth requires a strong private sector, not more federal spending and red tape. The second plank: Incentives matter. The GTP would use a carrot instead of the regulatory stick to improve environmental quality, and let energy markets and prices dictate energy sources. A replacement for fossil fuels will be found only when entrepreneurs can make a profit from cheaper, cleaner and more efficient energy.
The Obama administration has spent billions on alternative energy ostensibly to create jobs and improve the environment, but it hasn't been able to pick winners. The now-bankrupt solar company, Solyndra, received subsidies of $535 million and only had 1,500 employees. Subsidized ethanol production encourages the destruction of wetlands and increases the use of pesticides and herbicides. Wind turbines disrupt bird flight paths, and solar farms are unsightly.
Here are a few GTP environmental policies that make economic and common sense because they rely on market forces to discover what works:
The GTP would make land management agencies such as the Forest Service, Park Service and Bureau of Land Management turn a profit on the federal estate. With lands worth trillions of dollars, there is no excuse for continually adding red ink to the federal deficit. Yet between 2006 and 2008, the Forest Service lost an average of $3.58 billion per year. Moreover, an estimated 39 million acres are at risk of catastrophic wildfire and another six million are dying from insect infestation, much of which is due to environmental lawsuits that prevent agencies from cutting trees.
In contrast, between 1998 and 2005, the Salish-Kootenai Confederated Tribes in Montana earned $2.04 for each dollar they spent on tribal forestsbecause trees from their healthy forests command higher prices and keep administrative costs down. All this while maintaining an endangered-species habitat and improving water quality. The GTP would require federal land management agencies either to earn a profit or to turn the land over to state agencies, tribes, companies or environmental groups with a record of sound fiscal and environmental stewardship.
The GTP would tap water markets instead of tapping the U.S. Treasury. For decades, agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers have subsidized housing by providing free flood protection and water treatment, and below-cost irrigation and hydropower. These agencies have made water cheaper than dirt while ignoring environmental impacts such as dams that prevent salmon from spawning, and toxic irrigation runoff. Water markets would make consumers face the full cost, including the environmental cost, thus reducing the demand for water and providing more revenue for deteriorating infrastructure, such as water treatment plants.
The GTP would establish tradable catch shares to halt the decline of ocean fisheries. Where such sharesessentially, fishing rightshave been implemented, as in the Alaska halibut fishery, season lengths have increased, costs have declined, fish quality has increased and profits have risen. The Journal of Sustainable Development recently reported that "the federal deficit could be decreased by an estimated $890 million to $1.24 billion . . . if 36 of the 44 federal U.S. fisheries adopted catch shares."
It is not enough to strut your stuff in clothes made of recycled materials while driving your hybrid to an environmental protest. And environmental quality cannot be bought simply by throwing more tax dollars and regulations at problems. The GTP would serve environmental quality, budget cuts and economic prosperity.
Mr. Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Mont.
Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 10:44:27 AM by Crafty_Dog
Power User
Posts: 29669
Re: Green Free Market solutions
Reply #1 on:
September 23, 2011, 12:09:50 PM »
I thought Cain had a great night last night in the debate, but his comment about abolishing the EPA in my opinion in political terms was profoundly stupid. It plays right into some of the deepest fears independents have about the Republican Party.
Power User
Posts: 5541
Re: Green Free Market solutions
Reply #2 on:
September 26, 2011, 10:52:14 AM »
"I thought Cain had a great night last night in the debate, but his comment about abolishing the EPA in my opinion in political terms was profoundly stupid. It plays right into some of the deepest fears independents have about the Republican Party."
The EPA should stay, the department of energy should go. The only interest the government has in stopping energy production is to place reasonable protections for the environment, the jurisdiction of the EPA. I believe all states have their own EPA, ours is the PCA - Pollution Control Agency. The role of the EPA should be to monitor and review these state agencies for errors and omissions that are wrongfully allowing spillage over into other states, and then report that information back to the congress for necessary federal action.
Power User
Posts: 29669
Pickens: I was wrong, private sector can do the job
Reply #3 on:
September 07, 2012, 12:06:25 PM »
Patriot Post
Natural Gas Proponent Concedes Private Sector Can Do the Job
It wasn't too long ago that the "Pickens Plan" was all the rage among alternative energy buffs. Simply put, energy investor T. Boone Pickens wanted the federal government to subsidize the conversion of America's automotive fleet to natural gas power through tax credits while simultaneously financing the generation of electricity by wind power rather than through natural gas-burning power plants.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Pickens Plan -- the private sector began moving in the direction of switching over from diesel fuel to less expensive natural gas, at least for large truck fleets. Moreover, Pickens concedes, "I've lost my [rear]" on wind-energy investments. With those things in mind, Pickens stated last week that he's no longer going to back the NAT GAS Act in Congress, a proposal that was going nowhere fast anyway despite nearly 180 co-sponsors.
Much has changed in the four years since the Pickens Plan was introduced, as natural gas became more plentiful thanks to new technology while wind power began falling from favor with investors once government subsidies dried up. Given that the price advantage of natural gas is now about $2 over a gallon of diesel fuel, shrewd companies are seeing the opportunity and making the investments in natural gas pumping stations and retrofitting engines themselves. That's the type of plan with which we can all prosper.
Power User
Posts: 29669
POTH: Auctions intro market forces to conservation
Reply #4 on:
December 02, 2012, 08:22:17 PM »
POTH reacts predictably.
Power User
Posts: 29669
POTH: Irish carbon tax
Reply #5 on:
December 28, 2012, 09:44:33 AM »
As frequently noted in the Tax thread, what you tax more you get less of. So why not tax what you don't want (e.g. pollution) and don't tax what you do want (income, profit, savings, jobs, etc.)? By so doing the pricing mechanism of it all will inform us as to how much pollution we are willing to have. Very, very unfortunately, this concept seems to embraced by the Left without the part about cutting taxes on good things in equal measure.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 27, 2012
DUBLIN Over the last three years, with its economy in tatters, Ireland embraced a novel strategy to help reduce its staggering deficit: charging households and businesses for the environmental damage they cause.
The government imposed taxes on most of the fossil fuels used by homes, offices, vehicles and farms, based on each fuels carbon dioxide emissions, a move that immediately drove up prices for oil, natural gas and kerosene. Household trash is weighed at the curb, and residents are billed for anything that is not being recycled.
The Irish now pay purchase taxes on new cars and yearly registration fees that rise steeply in proportion to the vehicles emissions.
Environmentally and economically, the new taxes have delivered results. Long one of Europes highest per-capita producers of greenhouse gases, with levels nearing those of the United States, Ireland has seen its emissions drop more than 15 percent since 2008.
Although much of that decline can be attributed to a recession, changes in behavior also played a major role, experts say, noting that the countrys emissions dropped 6.7 percent in 2011 even as the economy grew slightly.
We are not saints like those Scandinavians we were lapping up fossil fuels, buying bigger cars and homes, very American, said Eamon Ryan, who was Irelands energy minister from 2007 to 2011. We just set up a price signal that raised significant revenue and changed behavior. Now, were smashing through the environmental targets we set for ourselves.
By contrast, carbon taxes are viewed as politically toxic in the United States. Republican leaders in Congress have pledged to block any proposal for such a tax, and President Obama has not advocated one, although the idea has drawn support from economists of varying ideologies.
Yet when the Irish were faced with new environmental taxes, they quickly shifted to greener fuels and cars and began recycling with fervor. Automakers like Mercedes found ways to make powerful cars with an emissions rating as low as tinier Nissans. With less trash, landfills closed. And as fossil fuels became more costly, renewable energy sources became more competitive, allowing Irelands wind power industry to thrive.
Even more significantly, revenue from environmental taxes has played a crucial role in helping Ireland reduce a daunting deficit by several billion euros each year.
The three-year-old carbon tax has raised nearly one billion euros ($1.3 billion) over all, including 400 million euros in 2012. That provided the Irish government with 25 percent of the 1.6 billion euros in new tax revenue it needed to narrow its budget gap this year and avert a rise in income tax rates.
The International Monetary Fund, which oversees the rescue plan, recently suggested that Ireland should expand the well-designed carbon tax and its automobile taxes to generate even more money.
Although first proposed by the Green Party, the environmental taxes enjoy the support of all major political parties because it puts a lot of money on the table, said Frank Convery, an economist at University College Dublin. The bailout plan for 2013 requires Ireland to embrace a mix of new tax revenues and spending cuts.
Not everyone is happy. The prices of basic commodities like gasoline and heating oil have risen 5 to 10 percent. This is particularly hard on the poor, although the government has provided subsidies for low-income families to better insulate homes, for example. And industries complain that the higher prices have made it harder for them to compete outside Ireland.
Prices just keep going up, and a lot of people think its a scam, said Imelda Lyons, 45, as she filled her car at a gas station here. You call it a carbon tax, but what good is being done with it to help the environment?
The coalition government that enacted the taxes was voted out of office last year. Just imagine President Obama saying in the debate, Ive got this great idea, but its going to increase your gasoline price, said Mr. Ryan, who lost his seat in the last election and now leads the Green Party. People didnt exactly cheer us on.
A recent report estimated that a modest carbon tax in the United States that increased incrementally over time could generate about $1.25 trillion in revenue from 2012 to 2022, reducing the 10-year deficit by 50 percent, based on projections from the Congressional Budget Office.
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I think most economists on the right and the left think a carbon tax is a good idea, said Aparna Mathur, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group that held a daylong seminar on carbon taxes in November. Some economists estimate that a carbon tax could raise $400 billion annually in the United States, she said. But the issue remains a nonstarter in the American political arena. even though Gilbert Metcalf, the Obama administrations deputy assistant Treasury secretary for environment and energy, long promoted carbon taxes as a Tufts University economist.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative advocacy group, has even filed a Freedom of Information suit seeking the release of Treasury Department e-mails containing the word carbon to make sure that nothing is in the works. Like many other economists, Dr. Metcalf has argued that carbon taxation is preferable to government regulation or cap-and-trade systems because it sets a straightforward price on greenhouse gas emissions and is relatively hard to evade.
Although carbon taxes in some ways disproportionately affect the poor who are less able to buy new, more efficient cars, for example such taxes do heavily penalize the wealthy, who consume far more. As with sin taxes on cigarettes, the taxes also alleviate some of the societal costs of pollution.
For several years, the European Commission has encouraged debt-ridden members of the European Union to embrace environmental taxes, saying that its economists have concluded they have a less detrimental macroeconomic impact than new income taxes or corporate taxes.
Europeans dont like taxes either, said Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action. But this is good for the environment, and also good for our competitiveness.
Some of Europes strongest economies, like Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, have taxed carbon dioxide emissions since the early 1990s, and Japan and Australia have introduced them more recently.
Ireland took the plunge after its economy collapsed in 2008 as a result of loose credit policies that created a real estate bubble; in one year, tax revenues fell 25 percent. With a huge bailout in 2010 by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Irelands deficit soared to 11.9 percent of its gross domestic product, or over 30 percent with all loans factored in.
The environmental taxes work in concert with austerity measures like reduced welfare payments and higher fees for health care that are expected to save 2.2 billion euros this year. The carbon tax is levied on fossil fuels when they enter the country and is then passed on to consumers at the point of purchase. The automobile sales tax, which ranges from 14 to 36 percent of a cars market price depending on its emissions, is simply folded into the sticker price.
That sent manufacturers racing to reduce emissions. Automakers like Mercedes and Volvo began making cars with high-efficiency diesel engines that shut off rather than idle when they stop, for example. For manufacturers its all, How low you can get? said Donal Duggan, a brand manager at an MSL showroom near central Dublin.
Other emissions taxes on cars, including the annual car registration fee, or road tax, are billed directly to customers, potentially adding thousands to annual operating costs. Ninety percent of new car sales last year were in the two lowest-emission tiers.
The taxes on garbage had an immediate impact. In Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County in southeastern Dublin, each homes black bin for garbage headed to the landfill is weighed at pickup to calculate quarterly charges. Green bins for recyclables are emptied free of charge.
There was a big furor initially, but now everything I throw out, I think, How could I recycle this? said Tara Brown, a mother of three.
Of course, new environmental taxes bring new pain. Gas, always expensive in Europe, sells here for about $8 a gallon, around 20 percent more than in 2009 because of tightening market supplies and the new tax.
Still, Dr. Convery, the economist, is encouraging the government to raise carbon tax rates for 2013, declaring, You dont want to waste a good crisis to do what we should be doing anyway.
Power User
Posts: 5541
Re: POTH: Irish carbon tax
Reply #6 on:
December 28, 2012, 12:08:40 PM »
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on December 28, 2012, 09:44:33 AM
As frequently noted in the Tax thread, what you tax more you get less of. So why not tax what you don't want (e.g. pollution) and don't tax what you do want (income, profit, savings, jobs, etc.)? By so doing the pricing mechanism of it all will inform us as to how much pollution we are willing to have. Very, very unfortunately, this concept seems to embraced by the Left without the part about cutting taxes on good things in equal measure.
I follow you in concept and agree this is interesting and important coverage.
That said, there is a difference between CO2 in normal activities and real pollution, like dumping mercury into the water supply or sulfur into the air. CO2 is associated with productive activities that are easily moved elsewhere. Punitive taxation can force those activities out. For a system like that to work, we still need to keep public sector costs competitive and keep that tax rate low enough to maximize revenue, not just chase away activities like production, transportation and the heating/cooling of homes and schools.
If CO2 reduction is paramount, why aren't we all over nuclear with zero CO2 emissions? Zero emissions would also mean zero tax revenue, giving the government a perverse incentive. Nuclear has other risks, how do we price that?
Pointed out in the premise, one HUGE problem with giving another tax the left is that this is in addition to all the other taxes, not in lieu of them. Like capital gains rates at 15%, they don't even mention there are at least 4 other taxes levied on the same 'gain', just that 15% is a low rate, lower than Warren Buffet's 150k/yr secretary pays. The left is raising taxes on incomes of the wealthy explicitly because they want to lower the incomes of the wealthy, not to raise revenues. The piling on of new taxes without eliminating old ones was the deal breaker for the consumption tax. This is both a consumption tax and a production tax. I strongly oppose adding new tax sources in this political environment, especially those that apply arbitrarily and unevenly.
Power User
Posts: 29669
Pull my finger, pull my leg-- nat gas exports
Reply #7 on:
May 20, 2013, 08:28:02 PM »
Natural Gas Exports, Maybe
The feds approve one new terminal, with multiple caveats.
President Obama can't seem to decide whether America's unconventional oil and gas revolution is good for the country, which is resulting in passive-aggressive government. Witness last week's approval of a new natural gas export terminal that may not be a real approval.
On Friday the Department of Energy greenlighted the $10 billion Freeport LNG project at Quintana Island, Texas, though with an asterisk. Five years ago the facility was built for liquefied natural gas imports. Today the U.S. is the world's largest gas producer and amid the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling boom could become a global supplier.
But only if the Administration gets its act together. Under a vestigial 1938 law, the feds must approve natural gas exports for countries with which the U.S. lacks free-trade agreements, including such trading partners as Japan. Freeport is only the second terminal to win this license, with 19 other applications outstanding, the longest of which has been waiting for 28 months.
The Energy Department ruling is encouraging as far as it goes, which is not very far. This regulatory laying on of hands is conditional and could be revoked at bureaucratic whim. And Energy provided no larger guidance about how it will handle permits going forward or what standards it will apply. The only leg Energy will show is a cryptic statement that it will process applications on "a case-by-case basis" and a promise (or threat) to assess "market developments" as terminals come on line.
This is silly because the U.S. already exports about as much natural gas every day via pipeline to Mexico and Canada as Freeport will export every year via liquefied gas on tankers. But it is also troubling because the DOE's review is based on the "public interest," rather than more objective standards like economic benefits.
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Associated Press
The Excelsior arrives at the Freeport LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) terminal in Houston in 2008.
Plenty of DOE and other studies have demonstrated those benefits, but big business and the green lobby are kicking in unison against new exports. Some manufacturers (notably Dow Chemical DOW -0.59% ) want to restrict world commerce to preserve artificially low domestic feedstock prices. Never mind that the inability to export could depress the incentive to drill and raise domestic prices. Domestic supply is likely to follow rising global demand if market signals are allowed to work.
As for the greens, they don't want to expand the market for any carbon-based fuel, even one that would reduce global carbon emissions. They also worry that increased production of a cheap and abundant source of energy through fracking might mean fewer subsidies for windmills and solar farms.
The DOE approval genuflects to these political-protectionist impulses, explaining that "agency intervention may be necessary to protect the public in the event there is insufficient domestic natural gas for domestic use. There may be other circumstances as well that cannot be foreseen that would require agency action." Will the approval last? "We cannot precisely identify all the circumstances under which such action would be taken."
Regulatory indecision is nearly as much of a threat to gas development as political opposition in an ultra capital-intensive industry. This month Japan's Mitsubishi and Mitsui and France's GDF Suez GSZ.FR +0.36% committed to invest $6 billion to $7 billion in a Louisiana LNG development backed by the U.S. Sempra Energy SRE +0.18% assuming regulatory approval.
Such deals will wither if regulatory uncertainty grows. A barrage of federal regulations and enforcement decisions over the last several years means that natural gas permits that used to take 60 days now require up to 18 months, and projects that used to win approval in a year take three times that.
The danger is that the U.S. is lilting into a system in which politicians second-guess markets and decide how much of America's natural gas assets to sell abroad. All the more so given that big business and the green lobby are the constituencies the White House tends to listen to. The Senate Energy Committee holds two hearings this week on gas exports, and maybe someone can get a straight answer out of DOE.
Power User
Posts: 5541
Re: Green Free Market solutions - LNG Exports
Reply #8 on:
May 21, 2013, 12:19:48 PM »
"Under a vestigial 1938 law, the feds must approve natural gas exports for countries with which the U.S. lacks free-trade agreements, including such trading partners as Japan. Freeport is only the second terminal to win this license, with 19 other applications outstanding, the longest of which has been waiting for 28 months."
I'm not much of an expert on fascism, but why would it take more than 24 hours for a reputable, private company to obtain government approval to ship safe, clean energy to an ally of the United States at fair market value. We don't want their money? We don't want them to use clean energy? We would rather have them pay OPEC and the Caliphate? We don't want to encourage economic growth if it goes to places like North Dakota, while the state of NY bans the same production? Is there nothing left of an assumption of economic liberty? Are ships carrying energy away from the U.S. a greater environmental risk than ships bringing energy to the U.S.? We know that our fascist central planners want more of the latter by their prohibitions of energy production and pipelines at home.
Power User
Posts: 29669
Re: Green Free Market solutions
Reply #9 on:
June 29, 2013, 03:03:32 PM »
I'm guessing the ideas here would come to fruition faster and cheaper via the free market:
Power User
Posts: 29669
POTH: Cargo delivery by tricycle
Reply #10 on:
July 07, 2013, 11:20:36 AM »
In Cargo Delivery, the Three-Wheelers That Could
B-Line Sustainable Delivery moves freight around downtown Portland, Ore., on electric-assisted tricycles.
By CLAIRE MARTIN
Published: July 6, 2013
ITS well-known that Portland really likes its bicycles. But its embrace of bike culture goes beyond its catering to commuters, leisure riders and athletes. So bike-centric is Portland that its residents can have any of the following delivered to their doorsteps by cycle: a pizza, a keg of pilsner, plumbing services or a hot tub. And the list grows from there.
Its logical, then, that a Portland entrepreneur, Franklin Jones, would have helped pioneer the new field of pedal-powered freight delivery. In 2009, Mr. Jones, a former teacher, founded B-Line Sustainable Urban Delivery, a company that delivers produce, baked goods, coffee beans, bike parts and office supplies to restaurants, bike shops and other businesses throughout Portlands downtown area using electric-assisted tricycles that pull 60-cubic-foot cargo boxes with a 600-pound capacity.
B-Line is the latest example of the greening of a traditional industry. The companys cargo boxes are comparable in size to a small commercial van, but, unlike vans, the trikes dont emit carbon dioxide or cause traffic jams at delivery stops. Mr. Jones estimates that B-Line has completed more than 30,000 deliveries that otherwise would have been made by gasoline-chugging vehicles.
When he arrived in Portland in 2008, Mr. Jones already had a sterling bicycle pedigree. As a child growing up in Kentucky, he was a competitive cyclist, and after graduating from college he took a job planning bicycle pathways in Bend, Ore.
Then came a teaching stint in Japan, which he capped off by cycling 11,000 miles on a circuitous route from Tokyo to Ireland that took 13 months to complete.
I saw bikes carrying goods and providing services, Mr. Jones recalls, from the typical loaded-down rickshaw on the streets of India to a more modern bike in Europe carrying bread or delivering the mail.
A few years after returning to the United States, he began looking into business ideas that could improve the overall livability of the community, he says. Discovering that there were gaps in urban transportation, he started to consider freight. You can move a lot of volume and weight into an urban core, but how do you get the smaller parcels out to all the end users? he wondered.
The answer, typically, is individual vehicles from cars to box trucks to semitrailers. Mr. Jones noticed that around Portland, many of these vehicles were often half-empty during deliveries. Moreover, they seemed to be handling a collection of small parcels: a box of paper, a bushel of broccoli, five pounds of coffee. Mr. Jones saw an opportunity. But first he needed a business plan something, as it turned out, that wasnt on the minds of early potential rivals.
Paul Gilles, vice president for operations at Portland Roasting Coffee, met with some of those competitors. It was: Hey dude, I have a really cool way to deliver your coffee. Its going to be awesome, he recalled of his meetings with other cycle-delivery start-ups.
In contrast, Mr. Jones showed up ready to talk about his pricing structure. He approached us as a business person, Mr. Gilles remembered. B-Line got the job, and now it makes up to 150 deliveries a day for more than a dozen clients, using a fleet of six trikes. The company is on track to have more than $400,000 in revenue this year, Mr. Jones says.
Historically, bicycle-based companies have been a very informal sector, says Jennifer Dederich, co-owner and manager of Portland Pedal Power, which specializes in business-to-consumer bicycle delivery bringing large catered lunches to law firms, for instance. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for Ms. Dederich and Mr. Jones, both of whom are now focused on expanding their companies.
A lot of what were doing is convincing future investors that our model works and that we can formalize this sector of business, Ms. Dederich says. Mr. Jones, too, is looking to attract investors in order to bring B-Line to other cities.
One strategy that both B-Line and Portland Pedal Power have devised is plastering the sides of their cargo boxes with advertisements. A majority of B-Lines delivery customers spend extra to have their company logo displayed on the cases while their goods are weaving through town, and some clients, including Google and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, have used B-Line expressly for advertising.
Pedal Power offers a similar advertising model, along with social media marketing for its clients. And Ms. Dederich makes it a priority to hire cyclists with other skills that can be used in the business like photography, videography and Web design.
THOUGH B-Lines cargo trikes are nimble and efficient, its delivery service isnt necessarily less expensive than the alternatives. In an e-mail, Yalmaz Siddiqui, the senior director of environmental strategy for Office Depot, for which B-Line has delivered 20,000 cartons of supplies so far this year, listed the boons to working with B-Line. The list did not include a cost benefit.
In fact, Mr. Siddiqui wrote that on a per-delivery basis, B-Line is a more expensive option. But he added that customers love the fact that their office supplies are coming by bike, and that Office Depot enjoys the idea of big green companies like ours supporting small green companies like theirs. He says these factors help Office Depot make a financial case for using B-Line. Most of the half-dozen B-Line customers interviewed for this article mentioned a similar emotional motivation. It feels good psychologically knowing that our delicious fresh bread is in that cargo box, says Claire Randall, a co-owner and general manager of Grand Central Bakery, a B-Line customer. For her and her partners, its even a personal point of pride. It killed us that all of our deliveries were in a van, Ms. Randall adds. Were all avid bikers.
Power User
Posts: 29669
POTH: Pollution Economics
Reply #11 on:
August 11, 2013, 12:03:35 AM »
Op-Ed Contributors
Pollution Economics
By DIRK FORRISTER and PAUL BLEDSOE
Published: August 9, 2013
WITH more than a million people in China dying prematurely each year from breathing its dirty air, and with warming temperatures portending rising sea levels and disruptions to food production, the centrally planned Communist country is experimenting with a capitalist approach to address the problem: it is creating incentives so that the market and not the government will force reductions in emissions.
The United States invented this approach in the 1990s to deal with acid rain. The effort was tremendously successful in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions that were poisoning lakes and streams, contaminating soils and accelerating the decay of buildings, at a cost lower than even its advocates anticipated.
But the United States has taken a policy detour that has hurt its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Congress has spurned the cap-and-trade approach China is trying, even though it is widely recognized as a cheaper way to lower emissions. As a result, President Obama has had little choice but to turn to government regulation to reduce these pollutants. Consumers will pay a higher price for electricity as a consequence. (No, you fg disingenuous anus; Obama insisted on ADDING these taxes to the existing ones instead of in lieu of existing taxes)
China, the worlds largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has begun its effort in the southern city of Shenzhen, paving the way for a national Chinese market in a few years. Like Europe, which voted to extend and improve its emissions market, and Australia and New Zealand, Shenzhen chose a carbon market as the most efficient way to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the Shenzhen program, the government will set limits on carbon dioxide discharges for 635 industrial companies and 197 public buildings that together account for about 40 percent of the citys emissions. Polluters whose emissions fall below the limit can sell the difference in the form of pollution allowances to other polluters. These companies must decide whether it is cheaper to reduce emissions or pollute above their limit by buying allowances, whose price will be set by supply and demand. But the pressure will be on, because the limits will decrease over time. Six more regional pilot programs are planned over the next year.
More than 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are now subject to carbon pricing systems. About 60 other states, provinces or countries are considering similar approaches, according to a recent World Bank report.
Carbon cap-and-trade programs align environmental goals with market incentives. Conventional regulatory approaches cannot ensure achievement of emissions targets, create problematic unintended consequences, and are very costly for what they achieve, says the economist Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.
So how did America detour away from emissions markets, which are the preferred approach of many economists, climate and consumer advocates, and many electric utility companies that own and operate power plants?
It all comes down to politics. Before the last recession, political support was building for a carbon market, with various Republicans, including Senator John McCain, his partys 2008 presidential nominee, supporting a market-based approach. After House Democrats approved a cap-and-trade bill in 2009 that put a price on fossil-fuel emissions, the issue became a target of the Tea Party. In the midst of the worst economy in 75 years, the Senate declined to take up the measure, and cap and trade became a dirty term on Capitol Hill.
Even so, several states already have turned to this approach. Californias effort began in January. Nine mid-Atlantic and Northeast states use it under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
In Washington, faint whispers of a carbon tax are still occasionally heard as a solution for budget and environmental problems in a single policy. But even if that were to happen, the tax would probably be small and would not guarantee the reduction in emissions needed. Like a tax, carbon markets can also generate revenue that can be rebated to consumers or used to lower other taxes.
The United States can still move back into a leadership position in the effort to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Learning from the experiences of the European Union and other programs, America can avoid the hiccups that hampered early efforts.
As the effects of a warming climate become increasingly apparent and the costs of adaptation rise, inaction will become an untenable political position. Markets play to Americas strengths. As the first President Bush said about his policy of emissions markets for controlling acid rain, markets harness the creativity and ingenuity of the private sector. What could be more American than that? Just ask the Chinese.
Dirk Forrister is president and chief executive officer of the International Emissions Trading Association. Paul Bledsoe is a senior fellow in the energy and climate program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Power User
Posts: 5541
Re: POTH: Pollution Economics
Reply #12 on:
August 11, 2013, 10:50:42 AM »
Interesting ideas, but dangerous to move seamlessly between putting filthy poisons in the air and regulation of carbon dioxide. Note that the author's profile gives a good disclosure of bias on the topic (as does the Pravda designation earned by the publication).
The filth in the air in China comes from the industrial plants that put filth in the air in China. The filth with all its components kills the quality of life and kills life itself.
The science of CO2 is not so simple. Are we sure that the human act of using fossil fuels and consequential CO2 has killed the quality of life and killed life itself? What was life expectancy and quality of life on the planet before and after the use of fossil fuels?
The point isn't to stomp out the use of clean coal, natural gas, unleaded gasoline etc BEFORE we find the replacement. The point IMHO is to find the efficient replacement and watch how quickly the old sources become a thing of the past.
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Clean the oceans in five years!
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September 09, 2013, 01:32:33 PM »
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Power User
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POTH: The Hot Air of offshore Wind
Reply #14 on:
January 23, 2014, 10:12:07 AM »
MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. Carl Horstmann strode around the floor of his factory here, passing welders honing head-high metal tubes as sparks flew. He is one of a dying breed: the owner of Mass Tank, a steel tank manufacturer in a down-at-the-heels region that was once a hub of the craft.
Four years ago, having heard of plans to build a $2.6 billion wind farm off the shores of Cape Cod, he saw opportunity. Much of the work, the developers and the politicians promised, would go to American companies like his, in what would be the dawn of a lucrative offshore wind industry in the United States.
Now, after Mr. Horstmann has spent more than $500,000, much has changed. Cape Wind, the wind farms developer, won a court case over an important approval on Wednesday but is still caught up in legal and financial wrangling and faces a tenuous future. And even if the project is completed, most of the investment and jobs for supplying the parts will go not to American companies like Mass Tank, but to European manufacturers.
Mr. Horstmanns company lost a bid to build support structures to a German company it had brought in as a partner, and last month Cape Wind completed arrangements for other major components, including the giant blades, towers and turbines, to be built in Denmark.
Those deals have provoked a strong reaction from suppliers like Mr. Horstmann, but they also illustrate the difficulty of creating a new energy industry from scratch, even one that has financial support from the government.
Weve seen this in other industries. We dont have the volume and the guaranteed market that China, for example, or some of the European countries that keep those jobs in their countries, can provide to investors, said Thomas A. Kochan, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its a catch-22, he said, because without a steady flow of projects, companies would not build plants and therefore, we dont get the jobs.
For Mr. Horstmann, the issue is personal. As Americans, we are really upset that all this money is going overseas, he said at the factory. As a ratepayer to a utility, he added, Im going to be getting my monthly bill and if Cape Wind goes through its going to have this premium on it.
Offshore wind farms are inherently risky ventures, requiring enormous investments not only from developers and financiers but also from governments and, ultimately, ordinary citizens.
And none is riskier than Cape Wind, whose plans call for 130 turbines slowly spinning on Horseshoe Shoal of Nantucket Sound, supplying 75 percent of the power for Cape Cod, Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket.
The project has been a source of bitter resistance since it was proposed in 2001, with opponents, who include the billionaire William Koch as well as local fishermen and business owners, saying it would increase utility rates and spoil the pristine view.
But proponents say that offshore power plants like Cape Wind are worth the gamble because they deliver cleaner, more efficient electricity and also spur economic development.
As evidence, supporters point to Europe, where billions have gone into helping companies build factories to make, transport and install the behemoth windmills needed to harness wind and withstand conditions miles out to sea. That has yielded dozens of offshore farms and roughly 60,000 jobs, according to industry estimates..
But even there where policies and subsidies have helped create a robust supply chain the upside has been fickle. On Germanys coast, for example, an estimated $1.3 billion went into revitalizing ports and factories to serve the industry, creating about 10,000 jobs. But demand frequently drops off when projects stall, at times leaving factories in coastal towns like Cuxhaven, on Germanys North Sea, sitting idle with hundreds of workers laid off.
In the United States, which has yet to put a wind farm in the water, the Interior Department is leasing sections of the ocean and the Energy Department has handed out grants and considered loan guarantees, like one that is pending for Cape Wind.
The potential economic impact of a new offshore wind industry is enormous, supporters say. The Energy Department estimates that the Atlantic coast could support as many as 70,000 jobs by 2030.
Cape Wind was to be the catalyst, leading to the first 1,000 jobs, with equipment from General Electric and other domestic suppliers.
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Mass Tanks plant in Middleborough, Mass. The companys bid on the offshore wind farm was deemed too expensive by Cape Wind, the wind farms developer. Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times
But a major setback came around 2009, when G.E. decided to back away from the offshore wind business, saying it was still too expensive to compete with land-based wind power. In response, Cape Wind turned to Vestas and Siemens, dominant players based in Northern Europe with factories in the United States that make onshore wind machines. In December, Siemens and Cape Wind completed the contract, in time, executives said, for the project to qualify for a federal tax credit valued at 30 percent of its cost.
Siemens plans to make the giant turbines in Denmark, though it is arranging for some work to be done with a company based in Maine. Offshore wind development is not yet far enough along to justify the expense of building a factory in the United States, industry executives say. Because of their size, the turbines and support structures require different factories and equipment, and are generally too heavy to transport over normal roads.
Aside from Cape Wind, there are only two projects off the Atlantic coast that could come to fruition soon, both relatively small, with just five turbines each: a project by Deepwater Wind, which would rise from the waters near Rhode Island, and one by Fishermens Energy, near Atlantic City.
Its very difficult to build a new factory on the back of one order, said Mark Rodgers, Cape Winds chief spokesman. He said that the original estimates of creating 600 to 1,000 jobs still held, even though those included the manufacturing work as well. We may have been overly conservative initially in our forecast.
As for Mass Tank which had already agreed to lease a derelict building for its factory at the once-thriving Quincy Shipyard in Quincy, Mass. it lost out on the Cape Wind bid to Erndtebrücker Eisenwerk, or EEW, a much more established German company that Mass Tank had brought in as a partner.
There is an inherent risk to be in this industry and you have to be big enough to withstand it, said Timothy Mack, head of offshore wind development for North America for EEW. Mass Tank never came forward with any legitimate plan of financing.
Mr. Horstmann said he was well aware of the risks, so he lined up a team, including EEW, to help land the project. The politicians soon came running, eager to promote the hundreds of jobs the project would bring.
In 2010, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, in a tight re-election race at the time, nudged the deal forward and then joined Mr. Horstmann to announce it at the opening of a plant to test turbine blades in Boston. This agreement between Cape Wind, Mass Tank and EEW will create hundreds of new manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts as we take the lead on offshore wind energy in the United States, Governor Patrick said at the time, according to a statement. This is what our clean energy future is all about.
By April 2011, under a joint venture named East Coast Offshore Fabricators, or Eco Fab, the partners submitted their proposal to Cape Wind in the hope of signing a $137 million contract.
But Cape Winds president, Jim Gordon, rejected the proposal as too expensive.
Then things got quiet, said Randy Kupferberg, Mass Tanks chief operating officer.
Accounts differ over how the deal fell apart. Cape Wind expected Mass Tank to contribute or find financing before awarding the contract, while Mass Tank needed the contract to raise the roughly $35 million or $40 million that its plant would cost. Under those circumstances, Mr. Mack of EEW said, there was not a profitable way to go forward.
Despite the disappointment, Mr. Horstmann and his team are pursuing other possibilities. There is interest in New Jersey, they say, in their participation in a factory planned for the Fishermens project. But their chance to put Mass Tank at the forefront of serving the Atlantic coast offshore industry may have slipped through their fingers.
We tried to hit a home run with this, Mr. Horstmann said. And we didnt.
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Space based solar energy
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March 29, 2014, 08:28:09 PM »
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Current Turbines
Reply #16 on:
April 01, 2014, 10:44:52 AM »
Power User
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Radioactive fracking waste?
Reply #17 on:
April 15, 2014, 06:41:26 PM »
PAsting in this thread as well
Radioactive Waste Is North Dakota's New Shale Problem
Local Officials Find Improper Dumping of Used 'Oil Socks'
Chester Dawson
April 15, 2014 1:29 p.m. ET
Bags full of radioactive oil filters piled in an abandoned building in Noonan, N.D. North Dakota Health Department/Associated Press
At a deserted gas station in a remote North Dakotan town, local officials recently found the latest example of the shale-oil boom's unintended consequences: hundreds of garbage bags filled with mildly radioactive waste.
These bags, which were discovered late February in Noonan, N.D., contained what are known as "oil socks": three-foot-long, snake-like filters made of absorbent fiber that the shale-oil industry uses to capture silt from waste water resulting from hydraulic fracturing.
Days earlier, a similar trove had been found on flatbed trailers near a landfill in Watford Citywhich, like Noonan, is located in the state's sparsely populated westernmost reaches where the Bakken oil shale formation lies.
The two recent incidents show that North Dakota's regulators have been slow to address repercussions from the surge in crude output, ranging from widespread flaring of natural gas at oil wells to drill rigs popping up on historic lands.
Most of the radioactive material in oil socks comes from silt filtered in the process of pumping waste water down injection wells. Radium, found in soil, rock and water, accumulates in the filtered silt.
"Before the Bakken oil boom we didn't have any of these materials being generated," said State Waste Management Director Scott Radig. "So it wasn't really an issue."
The trailers found in Watford City that contained improperly stored oil socks belonged to Riverton, Wyo.-based RP Services LLC, state officials said. The investigation is still underway, and RP Services didn't respond to requests for comment. One of its clients, oil giant Continental Resources Inc., CLR +0.86% has cut ties with the company as a result of the discovery.
Radiation levels from these oil socks are fairly lowNorth Dakota state officials say a person could stand for a year by a Dumpster full of them and receive less skin radiation than from a dental X-ray. But the discovery of the large quantities of improperly stored and abandoned radioactive waste has triggered a public outcry.
Last week, the state reacted by passing new regulationseffective June 1forcing the shale-oil industry to use leak-proof containers to temporarily store the socks at well sites. "This is a response to the ongoing problem of illegal dumping of filter socks," said Lynn Helms, director of the state department of mineral resources.
North Dakota already mandates the filters eventually be transported by "licensed waste haulers" to an authorized disposal facility.
The problem: North Dakota doesn't have a single storage facility capable of handling radioactive wasteand it now has between 500 and 600 injection wells producing the socks.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the average level of radium in soil is below five picocuries per gram, which is the maximum threshold for waste disposal at standard dumps in North Dakota and many other states. The average concentration of radium in wastewater sludge from oil-and-gas production is about 75 picocuries per gram, according to the EPA. Radioactive sludge poses a higher risk of exposure than some other forms of radiation-prone substances because their solubility in water allows them to be more readily released to the environment.
Several states outside of North DakotaIdaho, Colorado, Utah, and to some extent, Montanahave designated dumps to handle above-average levels of radioactive waste. Facilities in Montana accept materials with radiation levels of under 30 picocuries per gram, while in Idaho, they tolerate levels as high as 1,500.
As a result, radioactive oil socks from North Dakota's shale-oil industry often have to be transported hundreds of miles away to dumps certified to handle it.
"There's such a rush to get the oil out that the rules and regulations are not keeping up with the pace of development," said Wayde Schafer, head of the North Dakota chapter of the Sierra Club. "This state is reactive instead of proactive," he said.
Illegal disposal or storage of radioactive waste in North Dakota is subject to fines of up to $10,000 per incident in addition to a $1,000 fine for standard illegal dumping, state officials say. But that hasn't stopped the occasional dumping of contaminated socks on road sides or at waste facilities.
Dump operators now routinely screen garbage with radiation monitors, and have the power to levy fines on offenders.
"It's unfortunate it falls to guys like me to enforce the rules," said Rick Schreiber, solid waste director at the McKenzie County Landfill near Watford City, which levies a fine of $1,000 per sock. "The state isn't doing much about it."
Policing is part of dump operators' job, state officials say. "They are responsible for checking waste loads coming in," said David Glatt, chief of the North Dakota Health Department's Environmental Health Section. "They can either reject it, or they can fine them."
North Dakota's volume of filter waste with levels of radiation requiring specialized disposal ranges from a low of eight tons a day to several times that number, according to state and industry officials.
Where all that oilfield-related waste winds up is anyone's guess, say companies specializing in radioactive waste disposal. But they believe most of the filters are being properly handled to avoid heavy fines.
"When you're looking at fines of $1,000 per sock, it really doesn't make financial sense to sneak them in" to state dumps, said Kurt Rhea, manager of a Denver-based waste disposal unit of Secure Energy Services Inc. SES.T -0.05% "I've had a couple of people call up and say: I can't tell you my company name, but what would it cost?'" to have the filters disposed of out of state, Mr. Rhea said.
The North Dakota Petroleum Council, an industry lobby, believes the state's radiation exposure limits for industrial waste are too low and supports allowing disposal within North Dakota at certified dumps. That is something state health authorities are studying, in cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory.
"We need a North Dakota-based solution," said council president Ron Ness.
Write to Chester Dawson at
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How to remove background from an image with Gimp?
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There are several ways, like always, like in Adobe Photoshop or the like. One that comes to mind that used to work: use magic wand to select the background (and interior parts if you want them to go away) , do whilst shift pressed to add more areas, hit ctrl+i to invert selection, and without deselecting (so it gets placed in same area) hit ctrl+v. Then in layers window right click on that strange new layer created, and in the context menu that pops, select "new layer", it will be only the pixels you want and the rest is transparent. Now you'd delete the background layer (your original scan)

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OXO Twisting Tea Ball
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Enjoy loose-leaf tea without the mess. Scoop the desired amount of tea into one side of this ball, then give the handle a twist. The ball closes with a snap, preventing tea leaves from falling out the sides. The long stainless-steel neck makes it easy to steep by the mugful.
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Pugs in a Bug
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Watch out! Pug puppies are taking to the road in this catchy canine counting book
Six pudgy pugs in a zip-zoom Bug. Beep, beep! Bow wow! Take a spin! Through country and city, from desert to beach, this rhyming, rollicking, chantalong book offers plenty of sights to see and count. Sheepdogs in their jeep, greyhounds in a bus, even bulldogs driving cabs! Award winner Carolyn Crimi and rising star Stephanie Buscema invite kids to read it loud, read it often, and read it silly.
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On July 28th, the House passed the FY 2011 Military Construction/VA Appropriations bill (H.R. 5822). This bill continues our commitment to our nation's veterans. Just as our military pledges to leave no one behind on the battlefield, since January 2007, the Democratic-led Congress has pledged to leave no veteran behind when they come home.
Overall, this bill provides $77.3 billion in discretionary spending for FY 2011, equal to the Administration's request. It is $745 million less than FY 2010, largely due to this being the final year of BRAC 2005. It also continues last year's first-ever advance appropriations for VA health care by including $50.6 billion for FY 2012.
For VA programs, the bill provides $57.0 billion in discretionary funding, an increase of $3.9 billion or 7.4% over the FY 2010 level. With this funding, the VA will be able to accomplish its key mission of providing quality medical care to over 6 million veterans in 2011, including more than 439,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill also includes an unprecedented increase to support the processing of more than 1 million VA disability claims. Under the bill, more than 4,000 additional permanent claims processors, an increase of almost 25%, will target the growing backlog of claims.
With passage of this bill, since January 2007, the new Direction Congress will have provided a 70 percent increase in funding for veterans' health care and benefits, over 10,000 new claims processors to reduce VA case backlogs, 3,389 new doctors and 14,316 new nurses, 145 new community-based vet outpatient clinics, and 92 new vet centers.
The bill is fiscally responsible. It makes cuts in VA programs that aren't working and uses those funds to bolster programs that need more resources. For example, it provides $85 million less than requested for IT Systems, and uses the savings for additional resources for construction backlogs, the Office of Inspector General, and education claims processors.
Summary From the House Appropriations Committee:
$120.8 billion for veterans medical care, claims processors, and facility improvements, which is $11.2 billion above 2010 and $1.5 million below the request. In addition, $50.6 billion is provided as advance appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for three medical accounts: medical services, medical support and compliance, and medical facilities - a $2.4 billion or 5.0 percent increase over 2011.
Veterans Health Administration (VHA): $48.8 billion for veterans medical care, which was advance funded in the 2010 bill, matching the request and $3.7 billion above 2010. The Veterans Health Administration estimates it will treat more than 6.1 million patients in 2011, including more than 439,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Medical Services: $37.1 billion to improve access to medical services for all veterans, which was advance funded in the 2010 bill, matching the request and $2.4 billion above the 2010 level.
- Mental Health: $5.2 billion, matching the request and $410 million above 2010, for mental health services to help veterans suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and traumatic brain injury.
- Assistance for Homeless Vets: $4.2 billion, matching the request and $696 million above 2010, including $218 million for the homeless grants and per diem program, $51 million for supportive services for low income veterans and families, and $151 million for the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program.
- Rural Health: $250 million, as requested, for innovative practices to improve access to care for veterans in rural areas. More than 3.2 million (41 percent) of enrolled veterans live in rural or highly rural areas.
- Medical Support and Compliance: $5.3 billion, matching the request and $377 million above 2010, to ensure the efficient operation of the Department's health care system. This appropriation was advance funded in the 2010 bill.
- Medical Facilities: $5.7 billion, which was advance funded in the 2010 bill, matching the request and $881 million above 2010. The increase is for non-recurring maintenance at existing facilities to address identified shortfalls and to ensure the Department's facilities remain capable of delivering world class medicine.
- Medical and Prosthetic Research: $590 million, as requested and $9 million above 2010, for medical and prosthetic research, including important research to address the needs of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans.
Major and Minor Construction: $1.7 billion, $65 million above the request and $213 million below 2010. Major construction funding of $1.2 billion will enable the Department to implement the recommendations made by the Capitol Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) Commission, which was established to review facilities and determine their construction needs. The $40 million increase over the request in minor construction will enable the
Department to complete a total of 114 projects in 2011.*
Extended Care Facilities: $85 million for grants to States for construction and renovation of extended care facilities, matching the request and $15 million below 2010. States must provide 35 percent of the cost, while the Department pays the other 65 percent. Demand for nursing home beds is increasing as veterans live longer and with chronic illnesses.
General Operating Expenses: $2.6 billion, $3 million above the request and $505 million above 2010, to enable the Department to hire more than 4,000 additional permanent claims processors to continue to work down the backlog of benefits claims and to reduce the time to process new claims. The most recent VA quarterly status report estimates that almost 490,000 claims are pending. Funds are also included to restore the staffing reductions proposed in the budget for
the Education claims processing program.*
$18.7 billion, $4.5 billion below 2010, for the base programs. The decrease from 2010 is attributable to the expected decline in requirements for BRAC, which will be completed in September 2011, and the success of the family housing privatization program. In addition, $1.3 billion in emergency appropriations is provided for Overseas Contingency Operations, for a total funding level in the bill of $20.0 billion, the same as the President's Request and $4.7 billion below 2010.
- Trainee Troop Housing Initiative: $190 million to accelerate the Army's program to modernize troop housing facilities for trainees. The Army has a need for $1.7 billion to bring all 115,413 trainee barracks spaces up to standard and the program currently is not scheduled to finish until 2017.
- Guard and Reserve Initiative: $200 million in additional funding for Army National Guard, Air National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy and Marine Corps Reserve, and Air Force Reserve construction to address critical unfunded requirements, in recognition of the tremendous contributions made by Guard and Reserve personnel to emergency assistance, homeland security, and national defense.
- BRAC 1990 Environmental Cleanup: $460 million, $100 million above the request and $36 million below 2010, to address the large unfunded backlog of environmental cleanup for bases that were closed during the four previous BRAC rounds. The current estimate to complete cleanup of BRAC locations is $3.7 billion.
- 2005 BRAC and Re-stationing: $2.4 billion, matching the request, to implement base closures and realignments, and support the re-stationing of troops and their families from overseas to the U.S., by the statutory deadline of September 15, 2011.
- Military Housing: $1.8 billion, matching the request, to further eliminate inadequate military housing while maintaining and improving existing units. This funding will help the DOD address more than 7,000 inadequate family housing units in 2011.
- Overseas Contingency Operations: $1.3 billion to support additional military construction requirements to support operations and troop increases in Afghanistan.
American Battle Monuments Commission: $65.7 million, $2.9 million above 2010 and $1.47 million above the President's Request. This funding provides for the care and operation of our military monuments and cemeteries around the world. The amount provided includes $3.5 million for the construction and installation of Vietnam War battle maps at the Honolulu Memorial, and $467,000 for expansion of the Commission's interpretive programs through development of interactive programs on the Commission website. The amount recommended includes $1 million for refurbishment of the Bataan Death March Memorial in the Philippines.
United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims: $90.1 million, $63 million above 2010 and matching the request. The increase includes funding for construction of a Veterans Courthouse and Justice Center. The number of cases heard annually by the court has nearly doubled since 2000.
Cemeterial Expenses: $39.6 million, $1.5 million above the request and $250,000 below 2010, for Arlington cemetery. The additional funding will enable Arlington Cemetery to hire needed personnel to address deficiencies identified in recent Army Inspector General and internal reviews.
Armed Forces Retirement Home: $71.2 million, $62.8 million below 2010 and the same as the President's Request for the Armed Forces Retirement Home. The reduction reflects a decrease in funding required for replacement of the Scott building on the Washington, DC campus.
The effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars is a top priority for the Appropriations Committee. The bill takes important steps to strengthen management and oversight at the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, including:
Inspecting Military Construction in Afghanistan: $10 million of the $1.3 billion provided for Overseas Contingency Operations is directed to the DoD Inspector General to audit military construction projects in Afghanistan to ensure they meet standards for the life, health, and safety of our troops while protecting the interests of American taxpayers.
DoD Fuel Infrastructure: The bill includes language urging the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Defense Logistics Agency to devote sufficient resources to recapitalize at-risk DoD fuel infrastructure. There is an upward trend of fuel spills at DoD facilities related to infrastructure or equipment failure.
VA Inspector General: $115 million, $6 million above the request and 2010, to provide additional oversight personnel including initiatives regarding financial audit and information technology program reviews, the quality of outsourced care, and timely investigations of alleged medical misconduct.
Strengthening VA Contract Oversight: $23.6 million to strengthen VA acquisitions management. VA contract funding has grown substantially since 2001, but the capacity of the acquisition workforce has not kept pace, leading to increased risk of higher costs and unsuccessful contract outcomes. This funding supports a 5% increase in acquisition personnel and invests in appropriate training and technology to make the workforce more effective in managing taxpayer dollars.
VA Reserve Fund Controls: The bill includes language requiring the VA to better explain the use of its national reserve fund - including the planned allocation from each appropriation account to the reserve fund and 15-day advanced notification to the Committee before an obligation from the reserve can be made.
VA Bid Savings Control: The VA enjoys considerable flexibility in allocating funding for major construction projects, but has provided little information about ongoing projects to the Committee. To address that issue, the bill includes language requiring the VA to notify the Committee of all bid savings totaling $5 million or more or 5% of a project, whichever is less. The bill also requires the VA to notify the Committee prior to any change in the scope of a major
construction project.
Information Technology: $3.2 billion, $85 million below both the request and 2010. This reduction is due to cancellation of a project and large unobligated balances in the account. Spending has lagged while the VA conducts a comprehensive review of the cost-effectiveness of all major IT projects.
DOD Bid Savings: $272.5 million below the request for military construction projects due to bid savings.
Guam: $272.9 million below the request for military construction projects to realign Marine Corps forces to Guam, due to DOD's inability to address numerous concerns about the sustainability of the buildup as currently planned.
Preferences for U.S. military construction contractors: the bill expands current preferences for U.S. military construction contractors, including architectural and engineering firms, to all projects being performed in the U.S. Central Command area.
* Amended by the House


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Local 99-year old year old launches a book with this grandson's daughterAbsaraka, ND (WDAY TV)-- When your time here on earth is over, who will write a book about the sacrifices made, time spent, and gifts given.
By: Kevin Wallevand, WDAY
Absaraka, ND (WDAY TV)-- When your time here on earth is over, who will write a book about the sacrifices made, time spent, and gifts given.
99-year old Roy Faught of Absaraka, North Dakota is not only an experienced businessman and community leader he is now an author.
Today, Faught and his grandson's daughter launched the "team-effort."
Just months shy of turning 100, Roy Faught is on the internet today. He also has a cell phone, he says he is not sure about an I-phone. Think of the changes in 99-years Roy has seen.
Roy Faught- ND Author: "It is unbelievable really, when you stop and think, I never thought about it until I started writing the book."
Imagine what Roy Faught has witnessed, and, sharp as a tack, can talk about today.
My grandfather served in the Civil War.
He remembers the dust bowl days, countless war, blizzards, floods, farming with horses, steam engines, tractors, crank telephones, electricity, even the day in 1922 that WDAY radio went on the air. He rushed home from school, and he remembers being on a picnic outside.
Roy: "We laid there in the shade and dreamed about all those words going by is."
Roy has lived in the same house here in Absaraka since World War Two, he ran the mercantile store here. Hardware, machinery, you name it. A few years back, family asked him to record his history. With the help of his grandson's wife, Dawn, it all went into a book released today.
Dawn Faught- Helped Author Book: "It is down for keeping and anyone else I talk to they say my grandmother is still alive, get them down and tape record them so they are not lost."
There are family stories, the 75 year love affair he had with his wife Dacotah--he saw the pretty young lady at a basketball game in Ayr North Dakota back in 1933. He also shared heartache, the great depression. A businessman at the time, he saw friends go under, his father carried the credit for many, farm families barely survived.
"You ride with them as best you could, I paid interest on pennies on the till."
Here it is, my admissions, the the first 99 years. How fitting that it is a picture of Roy comforting a dog left behind after a neighbor died from the flu epidemic of 1919.
And late this afternoon in Casselton, they lined up to meet the celebrity.
With so many people knowing Roy, friends and complete strangers
stopped by to congratulate Roy in the new book.
He brags that there are still four people from his high school graduating class in Casselton. That was 1932.
Roy's youngest fan? Greydon Hagen. The son of Casselton's Jesse Hagen. The three year old came to get the book signed by Roy.
Tags: kevin wallevand, news, reporter, technology, updates


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CaféPorts is a frontend written in Java for MacPorts. MacPorts is a community-driven effort that aims to ease the compilation and distribution of open source projects on Mac OS X. With CaféPorts, it is easy to search, install, and in general manipulate these projects, with a Mac-friendly GUI user interface.
SynApp2 is a development tool that generates database-backed Web applications by processing your MySQL or Oracle schema definition and producing the Web pages used to manage your data. It does more than an admin tool or file manager by considering table relations as a cohesive whole that drives the generation of a complete application that smoothly integrates your entire database design, complete with PDF reports. It is open, compact, efficient, and compatible with the tools and technologies you're using now.
Symbolic is an enterprise platform designed to build, configure, and manage your huge and globally distributed data centers. It features cloud computing, Web manager virtual environments (Xen, KVM, and libvirt), clustering support, custom operations and scripts support, and user and role definitions.
A simple lock manager.
A LED matrix controller.


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Batchelor was born and reared in Anniston. The Vietnam Conflict was going on when he graduated from Anniston High School. He wasn't particularly happy about the war, so he decided to join the Coast Guard, thinking he would probably be sent to Guam.
Instead of Guam, he was sent to school to learn to be an engineer and was stationed near Boston. He spent a lot of his time trying to convert sea water into drinking water.
One day at sea, he began passing kidney stones. He was taken to land and doctors treated him with a dye that had iodine in it. No one knew that he was allergic to the iodine.
After he came out of the coma, he received a medical discharge. "They made me an offer to get out and not take any severance or disability," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."
After realizing that the Coast Guard and college didn't make him happy, he realized there was only one thing to do, and he'd been doing it all of his life -- repairing vehicles that had been wrecked or damaged.
"I was born and raised in it," Bachelor said., "I grew up in a car family helping with sales and body shop work. There was a time when my father stopped fixing cars and started driving a truck and that's when I told him I wasn't going to work with cars when I got out of school."
It was too late though. Batchelor's father had had him in his garage since he was 6 years old and the business had gotten into his blood just as it had his father's.
Batchelor owns Anniston Body Shop at 3705 Noble St., Anniston. In the telephone directory, the address is listed as South Pelham Road, Jacksonville, but it is actually on Noble Street, in the fork of the road, near the Old Gadsden Highway. His phone number is 236-0240.
"We're an insurance repair shop," he said. "We do crash work and paint work. We do primarily insurance repairs, but we welcome anyone who comes in. We have 24 hour towing. We come out to people's house and pick cars up or we'll come out and do estimates."
Batchelor said his days are usually long.
"If I'm out of the house by 6 in the morning, and if I'm back by 6:30 that night, it was a regular day," he said. "But sometimes they're longer than that. It's hard work. You have to have a talent to be good at it. I've seen people that want to do it and never can catch on because they don't have the talent, and then some people learn in the first year. It just comes natural for some."
Batchelor said his talent has made him a living.
"I've made a good, honest living at it," he said. "I've supported my kids and wife and made it possible for my wife and kids to go to school and get their degrees. I think they've all turned out good. I'm proud of them."
Batchelor said he'll retire when his friends read about him in the obituaries. "I have no intention of it as long as my health stays good enough," he said.
Since 1993, Batchelor and his wife, Suzanne have lived in the Cedar Springs community on Leyden's Mill Road. Suzanne teaches math at Saks High School and Jacksonville State University.
Their son and daughter-in-law, Andrew and the former Magan Calhoun, live in Tuscaloosa where Andrew is studying civil engineering at the University of Alabama. Their daughter, Fallan, lives in Orange Beach where she is a marine conservationist. Suzanne's mother, Sylvia Cashen, lives with them.
"I've enjoyed my days in Jacksonville," Batchelor said. "When we found our home, I said if we were able to buy it I could live there the rest of my life, and that's what I'm planning on doing."
Batchelor said it's seldom in his home that his wife and mother-in-law don't wake up smelling stock on Saturday mornings. He makes it at least once a week. He starts out with vegetables and eventually adds pork, chicken, fish or beef.
"We use the stock instead of cooking with water," he said. "It's really good because it makes the house smell really good and warm."
Several years ago, as a Christmas gift to her husband, Suzanne surprised him by signing him up to take some gourmet cooking classes from Jack Buchanan of Gadsden. They met Buchanan when he was chef at the Victoria in Anniston.
Learning a new way of cooking has brought about a different way the Batchelors buy food.
"Gourmet cooking changes the way you look at food," he said. "It changes the type of food you eat too."
Batchelor now enjoys cooking for charity events, including Relay for Life.
He enjoys listening to music and "playing in the dirt" with his tomatoes, banana plants and flowers. He's proud to be a member of the Fraternal Order of Police. "This would be a terrible country without law enforcement," he said. "We don't appreciate them enough."
Batchelor's parents are Jeanelle Batchelor and the late James Batchelor. His mother has resided in Jacksonville Heath and Rehabilitation Center for the past 12 years. It's there, every Saturday and Sunday morning, where Batchelor can be found.
Contact Margaret at email@example.com.


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AUSTIN -- Forbes recently listed Austin as the fastest growing city in the U.S. Leading economists paint a rosy, economic forecast for the city. Tuesday in his State of the City address, Mayor Lee Leffingwell did nothing to dispel that encouraging economic outlook. In fact, he says today Austin is the strongest it's been in its 173-year history.
It was an upbeat Leffingwell who delivered his State of the City address to the sold-out crowd at the Real Estate Council of Austin's monthly luncheon at the Four Seasons.
"There's not a mayor in the United States who wouldn't want to trade places with me," said Leffingwell. "Without a question we are in better economic shape than virtually any other city in the country."
Leffingwell says Austin has grown by 20 percent over the last decade and nearly four percent last year alone. It now ranks as the 13th largest city in the nation. He says despite that growth, Austin's unemployment remains a remarkably low five percent.
"That is close to full employment," said Leffingwell. "Four percent is full employment. We're over one percent of the Texas average. Texas is doing well, but we're almost three percentage points below the national average. We're doing very, very well."
Leffingwell says as Austin's population grew, so did job creation. More than 34,000 jobs were added he says making Austin the top performing economy among the 50 largest metro areas in the country last year. Leffingwell says the city has more than $3 billion worth of roadway projects planned, including I-35, but to properly address traffic congestion, a multi-modal transportation system is a must. Members of the local business community KVUE talked to say they were encouraged by what they heard.
"I think just maintaining the edge (is important)," said Rashed Islam with HRD Engineering. "I think there are a lot of people who would like to be in Austin's position. We just need to make sure we maintain that, so that we don't stop and not be complacent in our position."
"We're just a local contractor, not national," said Gary Keil with America Contractors. "If the mayor feels things here in the local economy are going well, the city is going to be supporting growth and construction. That's good news for us."
The mayor also touched on the new University of Texas medical school and how it will add 15,000 new, permanent jobs and nearly $2 billion annually in new economic activity.


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Recipe: The OhMyGod-Give-Me-That-Now Pudding Double Bonus Extravaganza
I've mentioned before that Sal and I frequently have pudding as our last meal of the day. He eats his as-is, and I usually stir in a scoop of chocolate protein powder. It's a nice little treat – low-calorie, sugarless, with a little bit of protein and some calcium (and mine comes with 24g of extra protein, too).
Last night as he was making a batch he came up with the brilliant idea of sinking a few frozen raspberries into the cups before the pudding had a chance to thicken.
"Whadya think?" he asked.
"Do it." I said, inspired, "That gives me an idea."
Then I mixed about a cup of plain nonfat yogurt (I am really into Fage right now), a little (maybe a tbsp?) agave syrup to sweeten (you could use splenda if you're into it), and a scoop of vanilla soy powder in a bowl with a whisk.
Whisk! Whisk! Whisk! Beat it up! Beat it beat it!!!!
Viola. White goo topping that tastes better than any cool whip crap I've ever had. It could have been lighter and fluffier, but I didn't feel like dragging out any appliances or using egg whites so I kept it simple. The result, as you can see, is scrumpshizzlious.
I commanded Sal to do the plating while I set up the camera. The lightly toasted pecans and frozen raspberry garnish on top were all his doing. He gave me 10 minutes to shoot before he ate it.*
Go. Make. Eat. Faint.
*Note: I had to shoot Sal's because I always destroy the consistency of my chocolate pudding before eating it by adding the scoop of chocolate protein powder. It turns it from firm pudding to a cake-batter like texture. Still ass-kickingly good, but doesn't present quite as well.
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- Double Chocolate Pecan Shake (Yes, I swear it's good for you.) Sal has a hardcore sweet tooth. Protein shakes have come...
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4 comments
OhMyGod that does look tasty! The drooling reminds me, I need to eat again. I'm having trouble keeping up with that "every 2 – 3 hours" thing.
He gave you ten MINUTES? I would have maybe given you ten SECONDS!
That raspberry wants me. I can feel it.
wow, I totally thought you stole that pic off the internet. . . nice work yo


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It's Hatched!
If you want to wow a special someone this Valentine's Day without having to brave the roads, today's deal from Abby Jewelry fits the bill. No need to tell that you saved over 66 percent--it will be DealChicken's secret. For only $29.99, you'll receive a pair of 1.2 carat white cubic zirconia stud earrings and a topaz teardrop necklace in pink or purple. The earrings are made with rhodium and feature white zirconia solitaires. The pendant is substantial and measures 2.6 x 1.4 cm.
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text: Come and celebrate Halloween the TechShop way: Make stuff.Who says Halloween is just for kids? Join us to learn how to concoct a Halloween cocktail or two, make Zombie cups, carve an evil-looking pumpkin to take home, or whip up a Halloween party tray of snacks and a Steampunk mask. Wear a costume! There will be a prize for the best one. And we promise that there will be candy. At the end, take everything you learn in this workshop home and hold your own Halloween party!http://techshop.ws/class_signup.html?no_back=1&a=1&i=51752502


text:
Eileen Philbin
Executive Director, American Senior Benefits Association
SmartD Rx CONTACT:
Paul Maccabee
Maccabee Public Relations
Jean Hill
Maccabee Public Relations
The American Senior Benefits Association and Smart Insurance Company Announce New Partnership
New Medicare Prescription Drug Plan SmartD Rx Offered to ASBA Membership
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Chicago, IL - October 15, 2012 - Chicago-based American Senior Benefits Association (ASBA) and Cleveland, Ohio-based Smart Insurance Company (www.smartdrx.com) announced today a partnership that would allow ASBA's more than 800,000 members access to SmartD Rx, a new federally-qualified Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (PDP). As a non-profit organization committed to providing lifestyle enhancement through benefits, advocacy and education to its over-50 members, the timing of this partnership is beneficial as many Part D participants will be re-evaluating their options for PDPs during the upcoming Medicare open enrollment period.
According to Bill Hill, Sr., ASBA President and Chairman of the Board, "Prescription medication costs continue to increase, and it is important to make sure our members have a reliable source for their Part D needs."
SmartD Rx was developed with the input of pharmacists and is offered to beneficiaries for the first time this fall during Medicare's open enrollment period. It is available through a first-of-its-kind pharmacy alliance with RxAlly, one of the largest Preferred Networks to help seniors maintain a trusted, personalized relationship with their community pharmacist and lower their prescription costs. More than 20,000 RxAlly member pharmacies, including independent pharmacies, regional chains and Walgreens, will begin accepting SmartD Rx on January 1, 2013. It will be offered in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with the American Senior Benefits Association," said Pritpal Virdee, Chief Executive Officer, Smart Insurance Company. "The mission of ASBA complements the goals behind SmartD Rx to be able to provide innovative solutions to help seniors better understand and take advantage of the prescription drug coverage options available in today's health care marketplace."
SmartD Rx offers $0 copays for preferred generic medications at Preferred Network pharmacies, low premium options and the convenience and cost savings of 90-day prescription refills at retail pharmacies. Additionally, qualified seniors will be able to receive comprehensive medication therapy management services from their community pharmacy.
SmartD Rx has two plan options available SmartD Rx Saver (PDP) and SmartD Rx Plus (PDP). Both plans offer seniors $0 member copays for preferred generic medications and lower copays for all medications at Preferred Network pharmacies. Neither plan has a mail order option, but both offer a 90-day supply of medication at retail pharmacies with a discounted copay compared to a 30-day supply. SmartD Rx Plus offers additional options to minimize out-of-pocket costs and greater levels of coverage with no deductible for a higher premium.
Additional features of SmartD Rx Saver and SmartD Rx Plus include:
To learn more about SmartD Rx, call 1-888-328-0417 or visit ASBA at www.asbaonline.org.
About American Senior Benefits Association
The American Senior Benefits Association (ASBA) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit association where membership is completely free. ASBA is committed to lifestyle enhancement through benefits, advocacy and education for the over-50 population. ASBA concentrates its efforts on the issues that are of greatest concern to its members. Through its partners and programs, ASBA members receive news and information, product and service discounts, as well as other benefits. Current ASBA membership stands at almost 800,000 nationally.
About Smart Insurance Company
Cleveland, OH-based Smart Insurance Company and its subsidiaries specialize in providing innovative insurance products to the senior marketplace. Smart Insurance Company's new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, SmartD Rx, is a Federally qualified Medicare contracting Prescription Drug Plan, available to consumers for the first time during this fall for Medicare's Annual Election open enrollment period from October 15, 2012 through December 7, 2012. SmartD Rx (www.smartdrx.com) is available through a Preferred Network of more than 20,000 trusted RxAlly community pharmacies including Walgreens, regional chains and independent pharmacies across the United States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.